(February 27, 1869 - September 22, 1970)

FOR HER OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTIONS TO
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES

| The Person | The Facility |

 

THE PERSON

Alice Hamilton, M.D., was "the first American physician to devote her life to the practice of industrial medicine."^*

Born into a prominent, but financially-pressed family of Fort Wayne, Indiana, she was devout and altruistic from an early age. After graduation from medical school at the University of Michigan in 1893, she accepted a position teaching pathology and histology at the Women's Medical College of Northwestern University in Chicago. Perhaps more importantly, she also moved into Jane Addams' Hull House, and there provided a well-baby clinic for residents of the settlement's neighborhood. Seeing the problems of poor working class families at close range, her compassion and professional interest were inexorably drawn to the many victims of work-related diseases and injuries.

Under the aegis first of a commission of the State of Illinois, and later the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, she conducted a series of brilliant explorations of occupational toxic disorders. Relying primarily on "shoe leather epidemiology," and the emerging laboratory science of toxicology, she pioneered occupational epidemiology and industrial hygiene in the United States beginning with investigations of lead poisoning among enamelers of bathtubs. Her findings were so scientifically persuasive, that they caused sweeping reforms, both voluntary and regulatory, to reduce occupational exposure to lead. Other investigations for which she is best known include studies of carbon monoxide poisoning in steelworkers, mercury poisoning in hatters, and "dead fingers" syndrome among laborers using jackhammers.

In conducting her field investigations, she applied precepts of scientific integrity and prudent public health practice which have influenced the discipline of occupational health to this day. These include the necessity for a strict definition of the disease problem, a thorough understanding of the industrial processes involved, and on-the-spot reporting of findings and recommendations to those in charge.

In 1919, Dr. Hamilton was appointed assistant professor of industrial medicine at Harvard Medical School. The first woman on the faculty of Harvard University, she made occupational health a respectable pursuit in the nation's most prestigious academic settings.

"From the start, her work was characterized by painstaking accuracy, scrupulous honesty she would not state as a fact what she did not know to be true and a disinclination for publicity."^**

^*The Discipline of Environmental and Occupational Medicine. In: Rom, W.V. ed. Environmental and Occupational Medicine. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983:4.
^**Sicherman, Barbara. Alice Hamilton, A Life in Letters. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984:4.

ALICE HAMILTON LABORATORY

On Friday, February 27, 1987, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health dedicated its facility located at 5555 Ridge Avenue in Cincinnati, Ohio, to the memory of Alice Hamilton, M.D. The facility will be known as the "Alice Hamilton Laboratory for Occupational Safety and Health" in honor of the first American physician to devote her professional life to the practice of occupational health.

Construction of this facility began in the Fall of 1952 and was completed in November 1954. For several years it was used as the world headquarters and manufacturing plant of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV). In this facility, "Ident-o-Tags," miniature license plates for key chains, were manufactured by disabled veterans for distribution throughout the United States.

In the early 1960's, a portion of the facility was leased to the Federal Government to provide space for a small number of Federal employees. From the early 1960's to the early 1970's more and more of the facility was used by the Federal Government, until by 1973, the entire building was leased for Federal offices and laboratories. In September of 1974, the first employees of NIOSH were assigned to space in the facility. In December 1982, the U.S. Public Health Service purchased the facility for three and one-half million dollars. It now houses the Division of Physical Science and Engineering and the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies. Over 200 people are at work here in engineering, epidemiology, general administration, industrial hygiene, and laboratory research. The facility contains some of the most advanced laboratories and sophisticated scientific equipment in the Institute.